National Disaster Management (NDMA) Guidelines on Urban Flood Management

In 2010, NDMA had issued guidelines on Urban Flood Management in India

• Create a National Hydro-meteorological Network.
• The guidelines say that for providing early warning, the Central Water Commission (CWC) should maximize the real-time hydro-meteorological network to cover all urban centres to effectively deal with the problem of urban flooding
• Use of Doppler Weather Radarsto be expanded to cover all urban areas in the country
• An inventory of the existing stormwater drainage system to be prepared. The inventory will be both watershed-based and ward-based.
• Catchment to be the basis for planning and designing the stormwater drainage systems in all ULBs
• All future road and rail bridges in cities crossing drain to be designed such that they do not block the flows resulting in backwater effect
• Every building in an urban area must have rainwater harvesting as an integral component of the building utility.
• Low-lying areas in cities have to be reserved for parks and other low-impact human activities.
• Encroachments on the drain should attract penal action.
• Pre-monsoon desilting of all major drains to be completed by March 31 each year.
• Urban Flooding has to be dealt as a separate disaster, de-linking it from riverine floods which affect the rural areas.
• Suitable interventions in the drainage system like traps, trash racks can be provided to reduce the amount of solid waste going into the storm sewers.
• Inlets to be provided on the roads to drain water to the roadside drains and these have to be designed based on current national and international practices.
• Every building in an urban area must have rainwater harvesting as an integral component of the building utility.
• Concept of Rain Gardens to be incorporated in planning for public parks and on-site stormwater management for larger colonies and sites that are to be developed.
• Flood hazard assessments should be done on the basis of projected future scenarios of intensities and duration of the rainfall and land-use changes.